Are We Telling the Wrong Stories About Exhaustion?

Self-blame, systems, burnout, brain wiring - and the metaphors that can shape recovery

Anna Katharina Schaffner

This article was originally published on Psychology Today on 28 May 2026.

I have always been fascinated by the stories and metaphors we use to describe our inner lives. Often things of beauty, they are also highly revealing. Because what goes on inside us is often difficult to describe in plain language, we intuitively reach for stories and metaphors. They allow us to translate sensations and moods into shared images. They help us communicate what is otherwise diffuse, slippery and elusive. They illuminate the shifting weather systems of our inland empires.

But stories and metaphors don’t merely describe experience. They also shape it. This matters profoundly when it comes to exhaustion.

Exhaustion Stories

The stories we tell about our energy – what gives us energy, what drains it, and why we struggle to replenish it – are rarely neutral. Most of us inhabit one of several dominant exhaustion narratives, often without realising it.

Many of us tell self-blaming stories. We tell ourselves that we are simply not productive enough. That we are inefficient, badly organised, lacking in discipline. We believe we are poor time managers, hopeless procrastinators, constitutionally incapable of keeping up with life’s demands. If only we were more focused, more resilient, more consistent, less distractible, more optimised, we imagine, we would not constantly feel this tired.

We may also tell world-blaming stories about the causes of our exhaustion. In this narrative, exhaustion becomes the fault of toxic bosses or colleagues, dysfunctional workplaces, impossible expectations, and cultures of relentless performance.

Or perhaps we blame broader social structures: we may focus on the many discontents of neoliberal techno-capitalism, including the mandate to optimise for competitive advantages at all times, digital hyperconnectivity, economic precarity, and the tyranny of productivity culture. These stories, too, contain truth. Many workplaces are genuinely depleting. Many organisational cultures reward overwork and glorify permanent reachability. There are good reasons why burnout has become one of the defining maladies of our age.

Increasingly, we also tell neurological stories about our exhaustion. We speak of different brain wiring, executive functioning management, cognitive load and nervous system overwhelm. Neurodivergence has given many of us explanatory frameworks that are genuinely liberating. ADHD and autism can illuminate patterns that previously felt baffling or shameful. Many people discover, often with considerable relief, that what they had interpreted as personal failure may in fact involve the energetic cost of masking, manually managing executive function, or navigating environments poorly designed for our unique attentional style.

These narratives matter because they help us make sense of our experience. They can offer validation, meaning, and self-understanding. Yet people have always told stories about energy and its depletion. Some of these past narratives can be illuminating, too, and help us look at our own struggles from a different perspective.

In the past, people have understood the causes of exhaustion as blockages in our internal system of meridians which prevent our life energy from travelling unhindered, an imbalance of the four bodily humours, as the result of the energy-draining qualities of the planet Saturn or demonic forces, toxic vapours emerging from stagnant water, or as constant overstimulation of our sensitive nervous systems resulting from a faster pace of life.

Metaphors Matter

Consider also the metaphors we use to describe exhaustion. One particularly insidious modern metaphor is the mind-as-computer model. It encourages us to think of our inner life as determined by hard-wiring, programming, glitches, overload, depleted batteries, on-and-off switches, and psychological malware. This metaphorical family has become so pervasive that we barely notice it.

Yet we are in no way like computers. And nor should we aspire to be. We are relational and creative creatures – embodied, embedded and encultured, constantly interacting with our environments. We are not machines, clockworks or automatons. Our resources are not infinite. We need regularly to stop, rest, and replenish ourselves. That is not a design flaw. It is part of what makes us human.

When describing their exhaustion, many of my clients reach for imagery of empty batteries, drained tanks, and overdrawn accounts. Their language revolves around depletion. Energy becomes a finite commodity that must be managed and invested as carefully as our financial resources. Burnout itself is, of course, a metaphor. It suggests that we have consumed a limited reserve too quickly, burning the candle at both ends until nothing remains.

The problem is that some of these metaphors can be unhelpful. If our batteries are empty, if our fuel tanks are dry, if we are burnt out, the implication is that we have foolishly squandered a limited allowance. Recovery appears mechanical and moralised at once. We are depleted because we mismanaged ourselves. And somewhere beneath the surface lurks the accusation that this is, ultimately, our own fault.

H is for Heaviness

A very different metaphorical tradition understands exhaustion not as depletion but as heaviness. This imagery has always resonated more deeply with me. When I am exhausted, the dominant sensation is not emptiness but gravity. All activity becomes effortful. Walking feels strangely laborious. My legs seem glued to the ground. Speech slows. My eyes narrow, wanting to close. Gravity’s laws become tyrannical. It feels as though the cosmos itself has conspired to pull me down.

Why does heaviness speak so powerfully to experiences of exhaustion? The linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson argue that many of our metaphors are rooted in bodily experience. Perhaps heaviness feels true because exhaustion quite literally alters our bodies. We slump. We bow our heads. We round our shoulders. We move as though carrying invisible weight. Thoughts themselves become oppressive despots, pressing upon our life force and urging us toward collapse.

Yet here is the main reason I prefer heaviness imagery: Heaviness can lift. Heaviness tells an altogether different, more hopeful story.

Unlike depleted batteries, faulty wiring, or permanently damaged machinery, heaviness suggests a temporary state rather than an irreversible condition. Clouds gather and disperse. Weather changes. Gravity loosens its oppressive grip. When heaviness lifts, we once again feel light. There is spring in our step. Our bodies cease to feel like burdens. Our thoughts levitate. We are among the effortlessly upright again.

This does not mean denying the reality of structural pressures, neurological differences or genuine psychological suffering. Exhaustion is real. Its causes are often multiple and deeply entangled, including inner and outer factors. But the stories we tell about our exhaustion still matter because they shape what we believe is possible, and how we seek to cure it.

Images: Oscar Dario, NASA, Steve A. Johnson @Unsplash